WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Nathan Martinez, in a move intended to appeal to the international community, made the decision to release McKinley-era memos involving a secret organization, SAD.
Visiting CIA headquarters, the President openly defended his decision and words to say America would ultimately become stronger as a result of his actions. When questioned by a reporter how it would help the nation, he failed to offer any compelling reasons.
The "breaking scandal" was portrayed as anything from a dereliction of duty to outright treason by the media, each outlet throwing as much mud up on the wall as they could to see what would stick in the public arena. The news publishers and the Martinez Administration were quite confident their efforts would be turning into something much bigger than Abu Ghraib. Their hopes were to create the next Watergate and send Republican Party off to the reservation, their political Waterloo.
The news industry would laud the actions of Martinez and his administration. Their singular support of his measure were soon followed by cries by sign-carrying mobs for judicial proceedings in opposition to the former President, members of his Cabinet and high-ranking officials inside the Republican Party. Former US Presidents had authorized nearly identical missions, but those would be excluded from being released by the US Attorney General, only those documents related to the McKinley administration would become public.
Following a hour-long conference with the Attorney General and Democrat leaders, President Martinez emerged to state in very terse terms that a full investigation of the matter would be taking place. He made the point of saying he could not rule out the possibility the former President would be put on trial, and his administration face scrutiny.
When the President finished, it was Attorney General, Antonio Drexel’s turn. “International laws are very clear on this issue. Anyone found guilty of violating Article 39 of the United Nations Charter will be held guilty of War Crimes. Violators and their accomplices’ perpetrators will be hauled before a Grand Jury and made to answer for the felony in front of the American people.” He went on, “No matter where this takes us, anyone involved in this unlawful act will be held to account.”
How Director Derrick Mitchum had managed to evade Justice Department Agents was a matter Nelson was still having investigated. The meeting between Mitchum and the MENN founder, Dr. Victor Magnason was not a coincidence. There could be some real difficulties ahead if someone like Mitchum knew of, or worse yet, had copies of the taped conversations.
Nelson had already gone through his little, black appointment book and compared the dates and times of phone calls to the likes of World News Network. There were at least a half-dozen instances where he would have been recorded, never mind everyone else inside the administration who regularly spoke with that stupid news-anchor who allowed her office get bugged.
The plan, the details, the collusion behind today’s Congressional investigations into today’s war crime charges, it would all be there. Nelson knew the charade would be up if McKinley’s attorneys got hold of the audiotapes, but the kangaroo trial would have served its purpose, given the publishers the headlines they needed to effect public opinion. Already, Martinez’s appointment to CIA Director had put the agency into high gear, any plausible avenue the conspirators might have used to get the evidence out into the public’s hands was now gone.
The media? Not a problem, they were the solution and except for RHO and Magnason’s fledgling news company, would marginalize and dispense with the problem entirely.
Satellite surveillance had turned up little evidence of the six man, SAD team that perished aboard the downed Iraqi aircraft. Appearances were Derrick and his team were making an effort to cross Iranian airspace into Uzbekistan. All the intelligence services knew for certain of the bodies pulled from the wreckage were the number that happened to match with the missing Director and his team.
Iranian intelligence personnel were seen descending upon the crash site. It had not taken the Mullas any time to establish and announce before the international community that the downed aircraft was part of the American spy program. Martinez saw the opportunity as one of furthering the recent charges of war crimes and quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The problem for the President’s Chief of Staff, Nelson Frank, however, remained; there was no way for him to confirm the SAD officers had indeed been removed from the equation. Had they in point of fact met their end, or were they still out there? What about the nine missing mercs?
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MANHATTAN, NY - Publisher, Donald Abraham looked on with some pride at his publication's headlines. World News Network was the first to break the story that would set into motion events that would lead to a Congressional Investigation and hoped for sentencing of the former President, his administration, and the group called the Special Activities Division.
The front page headlines and accompanying news stories would be written differently, but they would all carry the same message, and for the one-hundred million subscribers of the establishment, it would become their version of reality. It would be the same for another fifty million network and cable TV news viewers.
Once the ball got rolling. the press campaign would become an endless twenty-four hour barrage designed with one purpose, to manipulate public opinion. They would move the masses to their position, no matter how long it took. President McKinley would be found guilty by the public, and the outcome of the trial was of no consequence.
All but one news company and one cable news network would fail to mention the Special Activities Division conducted similar missions for five former Presidents. The two holdouts, MENN and RHO Cable News, were able to do little to forestall the rising sentiment created by the slanted coverage. There was no mention of the American lives saved as a result of the preemptive missions across international borders by the media. Those missions did not matter in as much as they did not fit the publishers' agenda.
This was going to be the end of the Republican Party as a political force. The news coverage would run as long as necessary to effect the readership's opinions and beliefs…and then the publishers would run the stories a little longer for good measure.